We are Stephani and Tharjan, both general practitioners from Leicester, UK. We’ve been volunteering with Kitrinos Healthcare for a month. We became doctors to improve access to healthcare for all. The refugee crisis is well known, and we have friends who’ve worked in Greece and told us about the situation here. This crisis is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the century. We hoped we could use our skills to help vulnerable people who have escaped from terrible situat

In June, a gentleman attended our ‘emergency night shift’ clinic suffering from weakness, difficulty breathing and pains in his head and chest. Though he’d been living in Greece since February, he described the feeling as ‘like having malaria’, and he’d even accessed antimalarial drugs from a camp neighbour which hadn’t helped his symptoms. A physical examination showed us that he had a high temperature, as well as low blood oxygen saturation, shallow breathing and abnormal l

My Experience with Kitrinos Healthcare Having taken two years out of formal medical training, most of which was spent working in Australia, I returned to the UK in March with an almost unheard-of gift: free, unscheduled time. My friend and fellow doctor, Emma, was in the same situation and so together we decided this would be the ideal time to volunteer… First impressions From the moment we arrived in Lesbos, we were greeted and welcomed by the Kitrinos team like we were fami

Kitrinos Healthcare are recruiting for medical volunteers to join our team in August. Are you a doctor who could spare a minimum of two weeks to help us care for refugees in Greece? Email us at volunteer@kitrinoshealthcare.com to apply. Don’t forget to spread the word to anyone who may be interested! Thank you.

In May 2021, I spent a month volunteering as a doctor with Kitrinos Healthcare in Moria 2.0, a refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece. There are so many things to take away from this month that it is hard to know how to put it into a few simple paragraphs. I think often about the work, which was in equal measures challenging and rewarding. Of course the people I met and worked with were truly memorable; from the other doctors from all over the world, to the translators and admin staf

"My name is Ali. I come from Iran but I have Afghan origins. I left Iran because even though I was born there, I was considered an Afghan refugee, and faced hard discrimination: for instance, I was not allowed to have children. I finished high school in Iran, then I went to Afghanistan to take care of my grandfather. Meanwhile, I studied English. I am from the Hazara population, and when I moved to Afghanistan I lived in Dashte-Barchi, a Hazara neighbourhood in Kabul. There w

"My name is Abdirizak, I come from Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. In Somalia, I went to school and lived with my family, but I had to leave because there was a coup and my life was in danger. I moved to Lesvos in November 2020 with some Somalian friends I met in Turkey. I have been working with Kitrinos and Eudaimonia Medical Services for a month as a Somali/English interpreter. Before that, I worked with another NGO in the camp. Life in the camp is really difficult